


Out there on the water

by flora_tyronelle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Eerie seaside happenings, Fae Magic, M/M, RS Fireside Tales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-10-06 19:35:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17351312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flora_tyronelle/pseuds/flora_tyronelle
Summary: In another life, Remus Lupin was sure that he had drowned.For as long as he can remember there have been things in the water, in the moonlight, on the black foaming beach before the glassy waves.Written forRS Fireside Tales 2019





	Out there on the water

**Author's Note:**

> CW: description of drowning and suicidal ideation.

In another life, Remus Lupin was sure that he had drowned.

He knew, viscerally, how it would feel: the water closing over his head, the cold sapping the strength from his limbs, the last desperate moments before opening his mouth to let in a salty, uncaring death. The ocean, oblivious, swallowing him whole. A grave on the seabed, a place to rest, finally still beneath a blanket of pounding waves. Far from the light. The surface the only ceiling.

His hands closed around the rusted railing, pale against the flaking paint, his lips wet with salt spray, his eyes unfocused as he stared towards an indistinct horizon. White light above iron grey water. The place where all these waking dreams started.

He had always been strange, even as a child. The sea fever, his mother called it, the way he would twist in his seat to stare out of the window, his grey eyes drawn to the shore; the way he would pick through the jagged, nearly lifeless rockpools, disturbing nothing but seeing everything; the way he would go down to the listless strip of dull sand every day after school to sit, and to think, and to say nothing to the kids who sneered or giggled. He had no friends. There was only his mother, and the waiting water.

At fourteen, he had started to see things. These visions were secrets that he kept close to his chest, for he sensed that to share them would be to label him damaged beyond repair, but he could not deny their existence. There were shapes, you see. Shapes beneath the waves. Sometimes, he thought they even tried to speak to him.

Seeing things; hearing voices nobody else could. These were not good signs. He never pretended that. And yet he went back every day, no matter the weather, no matter the darkness. He always went back to the waves.

When he was sixteen, he saw the first ghost. It had been but a brief encounter, a white, dead hand lifting to just below the surface, seaweed trailing from its wrist, fingers reaching out in supplication. At first, Remus had thought he was seeing a real corpse, an empty vessel that would wash up on the beach in a few hours’ time, but as he stared, the hand moved. Not the aimless drifting of water-washed debris, but a definite, deliberate movement. The hand had clenched into a fist, then wrenched downwards into the dark. Remus’ heart had pounded, but he hadn’t cried out. The ghost of a drowned man had just come to him. What else was he supposed to do?

He saw him again that winter, when a storm raged and sent spray flying up the bare rocky cliffs. Remus had been a lone figure, bundled in a coat, staring out at the raging water, when he saw someone swimming out in the bay. Again, he had tried to make sense of it- a porpoise, perhaps, or a seal braving the elements- but then there was no mistaking the sheen of pale skin cutting through the grey water. It was December. Without a wetsuit, most people would go into hypothermic shock in the icy North Sea: they were warned about it at school. And anyway, who would go swimming in weather like this?

_The ghost_ , Remus thought, and rather than scaring him the idea brought him comfort. Nobody was really in danger. It was only the ghost. Hesitantly- and he would not have done this if there had been anybody around to watch him- he raised a hand and waved. The wind streamed through his fingers. Abruptly, the swimmer disappeared, as though they had dived under. Ah well. It wasn’t as though Remus had expected them to wave back.

The next sighting came with the pounding rains of spring. On the old dock again, dressed in an ancient raincoat that smelled of mothballs, Remus saw the hand again. Or, to be more correct, the _hands_. They stretched up from the impenetrable darkness of the water, as though holding some invisible treasure in their grasp. They were free of seaweed this time, and they were still just as colourless, just as dead-looking. Remus had watched them, frozen, the rain lashing his face and dripping from his long nose. _You, again_ , he had thought, and there had been a pale flicker from somewhere below them, the suggestions of a face, a pair of shining eyes. Then they were gone.

The rain still came down. Spring gave way to summer. Remus felt as though he were building for something, although he did not know what.

Almost a full month after his seventeenth birthday, he woke at midnight, sweating through the sheets, his limbs all twisted up. A compulsion had his heart in its teeth. He fell from the bed, then staggered to his feet. The house was all silent around him. If his mother heard him wake, she did not try to stop him leaving.

Remus stumbled down the road, the wan streetlight spilling over the lines of his bare chest. The low rumble of the sea drew him on. As he left the battered old promenade behind, the artificial bulbs dimmed, giving way to the silver moon, full and dream-like in her majesty, hanging serenely in the black sky. Sand met Remus’ bare feet. He had not even put on shoes. The ocean glowered before him, desolate and beautiful, a hunger stronger than need.

Then, just as suddenly as it had come upon him, the urge to meet the sea was gone. He was left empty, as though a flood had washed through him, swaying on his feet before the inexorable tide. The night air seemed to meet his bare skin all at once. He shivered. His thin pyjama trousers, now ridiculously short in the ankle, did nothing to warm him. Why was he out here? He was not afraid, but confusion weighed heavily on his mind. It was as though he had been dreaming. He turned away. The time, though near, was not quite ripe.

When he was twenty-one, Remus was still there, in that battered little seafront town, tangled in fishnets and memories of a faded glory like a summer that comes once every forty years. His mother had started to forget things. She forgot her keys, her name, her son’s face. Remus tried to keep her safe. Often, he’d find her on the beach, staring blankly out to sea. He wondered if she had some long-lost lover out there, sailing endlessly, never returning home. He’d never known his father, after all. Perhaps that’s why he’d always felt called to the waves.

He worked in the village shop, dreary grey days stretching out, punctuated only by the aged ring of the till. The children he had gone to school with had scattered to the four winds. This bleak little corner of Scotland was not a place of opportunity. You had to really love it to want to stay. Remus neither loved nor hated it: the urge to remain was driven by something beyond emotion. He walked daily on the wild, bleak little beach, looking toward the horizon. Some days, he imagined the ghost beneath the waves, drifting with the tide, seaweed hair and silver eyes, endlessly lost and longing- maybe looking back.

On the next full moon, his mother went missing. Remus awoke in an empty house, the door unlocked, the keys back on the hook. The police were called, and two shabby uniforms shuffled into the front room and out again, muttering words of condolence: she’s elderly, she’s frail. Perhaps she got lost, confused in the dark. Remus said nothing. All his thoughts were outside, skimming the tops of the waves.

But that day, Remus did not go to the beach.

Instead, he climbed up the old crumbling footpath that shuddered on the side of the sea cliffs. The ruins of a lighthouse still clung to the crag, and he sheltered there for a while, shoulders hunched against the raging wind, elbows pinned to his side as though to keep his despair pinned safely inside, too. Then he could not restrain it any longer. The tempest ripped the howls straight from his open mouth; the rain that came later drowned his tears. He felt like a beacon of sorrow, unleashing his misery against who knew what, against the mysterious power that had stolen his mother and maybe it wasn’t real maybe she just forgot or maybe she just didn’t care about living any more maybe there was no selkie or siren just the endless weight of living-

It was nearly dark by the time he was spent. How he made it down the cliff path, he never knew. It was as though some invisible hand was steadying his shoulder, or a quiet force guiding his steps. The dock lay waiting below. A fall from there would have certainly killed him. Yet it did not happen. His feet hit the rough concrete; salt spray wet his lips. He walked home. The whitewashed walls seemed to glow in the dim streetlight. The storm was blowing itself out. Remus went inside and wondered what would happen if he slept for a year, if he pulled the covers over his head and let the world slide by, unaware, blissfully oblivious. The door boomed shut behind him, sounding loud in the silent, empty house.

He did not sleep for a week. Then, once he did, he woke all too soon, sunshine falling through the window in a tasteless mockery. It threw the little white lines on his bare arms into sharp relief. He squinted in the light, then turned over. But then there was a fraction of warmth on the back of his head: a gentle caress. His eyes opened again. And, slowly, in disarray and misery, he got up and began to dress.

The days passed in an endless stretch of blank emptiness. He did not understand it when people spoke to him. Often, he would climb the cliffs, taking refuge in the crumbling old lighthouse. It wasn’t safe, that’s what he’d been told in school, and he cherished that. None of it was safe- the path might give way, letting him fall. The moss-covered walls might shiver and collapse, holding him down. This did the opposite of dissuading him. _Would it be today?_ He always thought, as he bent double into the wind. _Would it be now?_

It never was. Summer folded her arms around the bleak little cove, turning the sea to azure and chasing the darkness away before her early dawns. Remus’ pilgrimage became ever safer, as the sky grew lighter and the winds and rain retreated out to sea. Dissatisfaction gnawed at him. His heart still chimed to the tempo of winter storms. But he could no more control the weather than he could control his own heart, so he had to content himself with the familiar path to the cliff-edge, watching a school of porpoises chasing sun-specks across the surface of the sea.

Near the solstice, the full moon came again. She loomed in the sky, enormous, swollen with silver light and beaming down on the tides she governed. Remus woke, sweating. His bedroom floor was littered with moon-shadows. The compulsion that had come to him four years ago had returned, dragging him from his bed, propelling him down the road. The air was as mild as it ever got in Scotland in the summer. There was no breeze disturbing the air. Only the ocean made any sound. Remus went to it; went right up to the waterline; sat down, sand on his pyjamas, his back straight, staring out at the moon-washed sea. Waiting.

And then, minutes- or perhaps hours later, the thing he was waiting for arrived in a boiling swirl of surf.

First, there was a head. Slick, dark, shining, breaching the waves like a birth. This was no bobbing seal: a face could be seen, nose pointed towards the sky, limbs slack and floating. As Remus stared, a memory came upon him, submerging him.

_The ghost of a drowned man had just come to him. What else was he supposed to do?_

A drowned man. Panic yanked him to his feet, but he did not run away. He ran _forwards_ , toes meeting the rime of salt water, ankles sloshing against the tiny breakers, wading when it was up to his knees. When the water met his waist, the current became strong. The waves rushing back threatened to tug him off his feet. Remus dug his toes into the sludgy sand and resisted. His reaching hand brushed limp fingers, then closed around a wrist. He pulled. Slowly, both he and his precious cargo were released from the tide.

At first, Remus was still certain the boy was dead. He wasn’t really a boy- unless you could call Remus a boy- but there was a delicateness to his features, a curious angle to his cheekbones, that made him look younger. His mouth was heavy, though, and his nose appeared to have been broken once upon a time. Remus knelt over him and wondered what to do. Thoughts of the police, or the coastguard, could not have been further from his mind.

Suddenly, shockingly, the man heaved a gasp. Remus reeled. Old training, drilled into every coastal child, took over. One hand took the man’s frozen one; the other pulled behind the crook of his knee. It was then that Remus realised he was naked. The realisation flickered briefly through his consciousness, before the man, now in the recovery position, began coughing violently. Water trickled out of his mouth.

“It’s alright,” Remus mumbled, although he did not sound sure of it, “You’re safe now. It’s alright.”

He would have panicked if the man had not stopped coughing, but eventually the fit subsided. His breathing sounded clearer now. The fluid from his lungs did not soak into the sand as Remus had expected it to, but formed a glistening puddle by his mouth.

There was a moment of silence. Faced with an infinite number of questions, Remus could not pick just one. He simply stared.

The man was long of limb and narrow framed, with a head of long dark hair. It lay in tendrils over his neck and shoulders. Remus noticed that otherwise he was mostly hairless. The moonlight made his skin look almost translucent. In the recovery position, his ribs were etched clearly in shadow and light, smoothly changing from one to the other as his chest rose and fell.

Eventually, the drowned man lifted his head. It was a feeble, unconvincing movement, but it was enough to shift the curtain of hair, for his eyes to lock upon Remus’. Remus recoiled.

He knew those eyes. Like a silver flicker in dark water.

“You,” the man breathed.

Remus stared. “I saw you. In the water.” The bald truth tripped from his mouth before he could stop it.

The man pushed himself roughly away from the sand, turning to gaze out at the gleaming waves. After a moment, his head bowed. His shoulders heaved. Remus could see his face: his expression was anguished. What made it so? As soon as Remus wondered, the strange feeling that had dragged him to the beach at midnight finally ebbed away. He was suddenly very cold.

“We should go,” Remus mumbled. The drowned man did nothing to resist; Remus interpreted it as assent. They both got to their feet. There was no spare clothing to cover the stranger’s nakedness, so he simply averted his eyes and walked as fast as he was able. He was not concerned with other villagers happening upon them. Nor did his companion ever ask where they were going. There was a strangeness about this night; there had been a twisting of the fates that demanded satisfaction. They arrived at the white-washed cottage, unseen.

The door closed quietly on a moon-drenched night. Remus went to bed. He did not dream at all.

The morning arrived in a spatter of chilly rain. Remus woke, then lurched upright. His pyjama trousers were abandoned on the floor- he crouched over and cautiously touched the hem. It was still damp. Had it really happened? He dressed in the cleanest pair of clothes he had- which was not very clean, the laundry had stopped some time ago- and rushed to the other bedroom. His mother’s bedroom. He had not been in there since the week after she had disappeared, unable to be so surrounded by her simultaneous presence and absence, until last night. If last night had happened at all…

He hesitantly pushed at the door. Silhouetted against the windowpane, a tall, narrow stranger looked over his shoulder. Remus felt electrified.

“You’re here.” The man’s voice was stronger now, more assured. A strange accent ran through it. Remus thought it sounded Scandinavian.

“So are you,” he retorted. Then he wondered why he’d said that. It made him seem childish, ill at ease. A fragile silence hovered between them.

Then the stranger’s face shifted, rearranging before his very eyes from guarded scrutiny to the faintest suggestion of a smile. “I hoped- no, I _knew_ you would be like this.” He hesitated, lifted those silver eyes. There was a hint of anticipatory challenge gleaming there, as though he knew his next word would find its mark, “Remus.”

Remus dimly felt his hand close convulsively on the door. Blood rushed in his ears. _Like the tide_ , he thought, _like the pull of the ocean_.

“You know my name.”

The drowned man nodded.

“I’ve seen you,” he continued, “from the water.”

And Remus did not remember much after that.

When he came to, things seemed far too real to be a dream. There was rain on the windows and the horrible brown carpet on the landing was scratching the back of his neck. And yet, there was the man, leaning over him, frowning.

“You fell.”

Remus did not answer that. Instead, he asked his own question. “Who are you?”

He was afraid, and he only realised it after hearing it in his voice.

“I’m Sirius,” the man said, “and I come from the sea.”

“I realise that,” Remus replied. His voice was still shaking. “Why are you here?”

The man- _Sirius_ \- closes his eyes. Silence spills between them. Gradually, Remus’ fear begins to subside. If Sirius had come here to harm him, he had had his opportunity.

“There was a debt.” Sirius spoke slowly, his eyes still closed.

“I don’t understand.”

Sirius did not reply, but he did offer a hand to lift Remus up. For a brief moment Remus wondered if his skin would be cold, clammy with chill water- but when their palms touched, there was nothing but warmth.

He got to his feet. It was only then that he realised what Sirius was wearing. Indeed, it felt like the first time he had really looked at him since the night before. Then, he had been dead. And now… Now there was a lavender knit cardigan involved. It was rather a lot, all at once.

Sirius had the strangest face Remus had ever seen. The structure didn’t match precisely to the way Remus knew human faces to look: it was an approximation, a starting point, white paper skin outlined with black tendrils of hair. It was like- like a picture book, or a drawing. Remus didn’t dare look into his eyes. It would be like looking into the face of a storm. Instead, he focused on the too-short sleeves of his mother’s second-best cardigan, and tried to decide where to start.

“What are you.” The words fell flat out of him, not a question but a statement. They were face to face now. Remus was barely an inch taller, but he didn’t feel it. Sirius’ expression quirked at the words, as though he didn’t understand.

Remus, hating himself for even suggesting it, attempted to form the word in his mouth. “Are you- a-”

Childhood fairy tales flashed before his eyes. Bodiless songs crooned from sharp rocks, long hair and fierce faces and the tail of a fish…

Remus glanced down. He couldn’t help it. Sirius _definitely_ had human legs. He was actually wearing a brown plaid skirt, which made it especially obvious.

“A what?” Sirius asked.

Remus hastily looked back up into his face. His voice appeared to be stuck in his throat. “A- mermaid.”

He even faltered half-way through the word, recognising the absurdity as he said it out loud. Sirius, however, didn’t laugh. Instead, he stared intently at Remus for a long moment, and Remus could no longer avoid noticing that his eyes were grey, grey like the winter sea. Before either of them could say anything, though, Sirius grimaced and half-doubled with pain.

Remus felt a leap of something strange and sharp in his chest. “Are you-?” But Sirius was already groaning and stumbling down the narrow stairs, a hand pressed not over his stomach, but over his heart.

In that strange way of knowing, Remus suddenly _knew_. Something awoke in his veins, just as it had the previous night, just as it had on all those nights before, when the moon bathed the ocean and silver and sang its siren call into his blood. He scrambled after Sirius with a speed he didn’t know he had, and threw his arm around his shoulder as they both burst out of the door.

Sirius was heavy and his breathing was ragged; he leant on Remus as though he gave it no conscious thought. There were people out in the street, they stared as the two young men passed, like drunkards in the daytime, or contestants in a strange three-legged race, but Remus could hardly see them. The sea dragged him forwards. _Sirius came from the sea. Without it, he would not survive._ He tried to stumble faster.

In their tiny village, nowhere was ever far from the shore. Remus’ house was especially close, barely three hundred feet from the old dock and the path to the lighthouse, so how could three hundred feet feel like a marathon, like it would never end? Sirius wheezed in his ear and pressed solid weight upon Remus’ narrow shoulders and Remus could only keep going.

They came upon the beach within moments. The rain still came down, stirring the surface of the water with delicate disturbances. The boundary between the road and the sand was just a lip of concrete; Remus stepped down and felt his load lighten. The roar of the waves pressed against their ears. Sirius’ breathing began to even out.

By some silent consensus, they sat on the damp sand, facing the sea. Remus realised that this was the closest he had been to another human being in a long time- then corrected himself, because Sirius wasn’t a human being at all. Still, he felt like one. His skin was warm. His posture echoed Remus’, his back bowed, arms slung around his knees. To the other villagers, hurrying along in the rain, Remus supposed they must look like any two young men, side-by-side, gazing towards the blurred horizon. Rain water began to drip down from his hair. He noticed all of a sudden that it was long. His mother had always cut his hair, tutting when it would get in his eyes.

Sirius’ hair was far longer than his. It looked shiny even slicked with rain, coiling down one side of his neck.

“This water…” Sirius gestured his hands to the air after what might have been hours of silence. His tone indicated disapproval. “It’s cold.”

“So’s the sea,” Remus said cautiously.

Sirius shook his head. “Not to me.”

Remus felt the need to clear his throat. “You do come from the sea, then? What you said, earlier-”

“You are honestly having trouble believing it?” Sirius sounded surprised. “After you’ve had the tidemark on you your whole life? After your mother went back to the sea when her time finally came?”

Time seemed to freeze. Sirius’ words echoed in his ears.

“What did you say.”

“The tidemark- it is the beat in your heart, the saltwater in your veins, it-”

“About my mother.”

Some of the strain must finally have shown in Remus’ voice, because Sirius turned to look at him.

“She said you didn’t know.” For the first time, he seemed unsure, softer. “But I didn’t-”

“You’ve seen her? _You took her?”_

Sirius leant away from him. Remus did not realise he’d surged forward, but he did not attempt to check himself.

“ _I_ didn’t. Nobody took her, that’s not our way. She came by herself.”

But Remus did not believe him. He was on his feet and striding towards the water, the disparate unreasonable circumstances of his life so far finally lining up, finally making terrible sense. Rain stung his eyes.

“Give her back.” The words tore from him, a seam ripping somewhere inside as the little racer waves ran up to his bare feet. In his hurry to leave the house, he had forgotten to put on shoes. “ _Give her back.”_

He could hear footsteps hurrying up behind him, so he ran. He ran into the water, soaking his jeans, the tide trying to push him away.

“Give her back!” He roared. The rain came down, uncaring. The sea continued to breathe, barely noticing his presence. Then hands were seizing him around the waist, dragging him back to the beach.

“Don’t-” Sirius was breathing hard from the effort, Remus was fighting him, “-don’t make demands. They _always_ extract a price.”

“What more could they take from me?” Remus spat. A lone gull soared overhead, letting out a mournful cry. Sirius did not answer that. Instead, he gave Remus a kind of rough shake, like a terrier with a rat.

“Stop it, before I _let_ you into the water. They’ll take everything, you understand? Everything.”

Remus stopped struggling. Sirius was staring straight at him, dark hair now plastered to his fine-boned head, rain dripping from the end of his nose. His eyes echoed the stormy greyness of the sea at his back. Hope’s woollen cardigan was soaked through.

“You said my mother went- of her own free will.” Remus’ voice nearly broke.

They were quite alone on the beach now, everyone else having retreated to drier climes. Sirius hesitantly took his hands down from where they rested on Remus’ shoulders.

“She did.”

Remus made a hopeless gesture. “Tell me what you are, Sirius. Tell me- all of this. Tell me.”

Wind stirred the top of the waves, flicking white-grey foam across the surface of the water. Sirius shivered.

“There isn’t a word in your language any more, for us. It was lost long ago.” He shivered more violently. “This _rain_. It’s worse than the white current.”

Remus blinked. “You’re cold.”

Sirius merely glared. “Aren’t you? Or do your kind withstand this water with no complaint?”

Remus supposed he was cold. He hadn’t noticed. Abruptly, he put his back to the waves.

“We should go back to the cottage. Will you be alright?” He was thinking of the fit that had come upon Sirius on the upstairs landing, how he had known to take him to the sea.

“For now. I’m told it gets easier.” There was a bitterness to Sirius’ words. The sudden flare of emotion shocked Remus- for some reason, he had not seen Sirius as a creature vulnerable enough to _feel_.

“Come on, then.”

Together, they retreated from the beach, the rain battering them all the way home.

Remus used the last two tea-bags and switched on the cranky old heater in the sitting room. They were all out of wood for the fire; yet another thing he had been neglecting. The windows began to steam up. Their clothes and hair dripped onto the floor, but there were no clean towels in the house. A resolve to do the laundry hardened in Remus’ chest. It surprised him. It had been a long time since he had come to resolution about anything.

“I’ll wash some clothes in a minute,” he said, suddenly awkward again, watching Sirius out of the corner of his eye, “there’s nothing clean to wear.”

“There were clothes upstairs,” Sirius pointed out, “and do you have to do that often? Wash clothes?”

Remus wasn’t entirely sure where to start. The kettle began to whistle.

“Those clothes were my mother’s,” he said quietly. He poured the water into two chipped mugs and automatically made the tea black and strong. “And yes. Clothes get… human being on them very easily.”

Sirius frowned, then frowned even more at the steaming mug Remus placed on the table in front of him. He looked almost comically out of place in a rickety kitchen chair, like a marble statue lying in a skip. “What’s this?”

“Tea.” Remus lowered himself into the chair opposite. “You drink it.”

Sirius hesitantly touched a fingertip to the surface of the liquid, then snatched it back before Remus could shout out. He made an expression of abject shock. “It’s hot!”

Remus felt a very strong, unnameable emotion rising up in him. Part of it was still astonishment. There was wonder there, too, and a curiosity so intense it felt as though it was eating him from the inside out, and burning fury. _This is crazy_ , he thought to himself, and a giggle burst out of him. Sirius glared again.

“This is funny to you?”

Remus shook his head, but laughter was ripping through him, leaving him helpless in its wake. He curled forward, shaking and wheezing, tears leaking from the corner of his eyes, hands clenched into fists. He felt as though he might be crying. A storm breaking.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, it let him go. He took a few deep breaths. He felt light-headed with release.

Sirius was watching him with an expression of deep suspicion on his face. “Are you sick?”

Remus shook his head and took a deep draught of tea. “No. But now- tell me.”

Sirius did not speak for a long moment. Instead, he watched carefully as Remus drunk his tea, like a young child observing how best to wield a knife and fork. When the silence felt as though it had stretched for several minutes, Sirius finally found his voice.

“Have you never wondered about your father?”

Remus, who had not been expecting a question, froze perfectly still. “I was always told he was a fisherman.”

A snort of wry laughter. “A fisher-man. Your mother had a sense of humour. He was one of us.”

“A merman?”

Sirius shrugged. “I don’t know the word. Maybe. The water people, selkie, maybe, only we aren’t seals. We are a race apart.”

“Apart from what?”

“The fair folk. They exiled us long ago, and so we took to the seas.”

Remus felt as though his mind were catching fire, crumbling into ash with all this knowledge. _The fair folk. Banished to the sea._ “What did you do? To be exiled?”

Sirius’ expression grew haughty. “ _I_ didn’t do anything. I wasn’t even born when we left the land. But I’ve heard tell that the fair folk didn’t like our ways, and that’s why we were cast out.”

“What ways?” Remus leant forward in his chair. The fair folk were real. The ocean in his blood was real. It was all _real_.

“Taking humans.” Sirius said it so casually, that Remus almost didn’t understand it.

“ _Taking_ -”

“Mixing with them, having children and so on. Not done. Not pure.” Sirius smiled a crooked smile. “They wouldn’t like you at all.”

A shiver slid down Remus’ spine. “You’re saying I’m…”

“Aye. You have Fae blood. _Our_ blood. It’s weakened somewhat, being raised away from our heritage, but your mother kept you close to the sea for a reason. It’s part of the tidemark. It holds you close to where you came from.”

Remus’ head was on his hands. He wasn’t sure how it had got there. Fae blood. A tidemark etched into his skin. A father who came from the water. And a mother who had abandoned him…

“She’s gone back to him, hasn’t she? My father.” He was shaking worse than he had done out in the cold.

“Aye.”

Remus spent a moment in silence, concentrating very hard on breathing. His next words made him sound very young.

“Will she come back?”

He couldn’t help it, couldn’t help the yearning that seized hold of his heart, the sickening clench of hope that roosted there.

Sirius shook his head, and it was almost gentle.

“That kind of choice… It’s permanent.”

The rain was beginning to ease outside. A summer squall. Vapour continued to rise from both of their clothes. Remus stared into the black depths of his tea as though trying to discern an answer through the spiralling steam. She was really gone. His mother had really gone. And in her place…

“I still don’t understand.” His voice was relatively steady. “You… My mother.” He pictured Hope in one of her cardigans, treading water at the bottom of the ocean. “You said there was a debt.”

Sirius traced a curious finger around the chipped edge of his mug, but his expression was flat and dead. “I did. There was. It’s settled now.”

“Settled by who?” Remus wanted to know. “Why were we in debt?”

“ _You_ weren’t. I told you: the fair folk don’t like our ways. When we were exiled, we were bound by certain… conditions. To take a human as we once did would result in forfeits. Forfeiting one of our own.”

Remus stared. “You. They forfeited you.”

Sirius smiled grimly. “An eye for an eye.”

Anger was, at last, beyond Remus’ grasp, so he got up, and walked out, and when he came back it was almost dark and he did not speak to Sirius for a week.

At least, that was what he had intended. When he snuck back into his own house the sun was swelling the dusky sky with a symphony of colour and the anger-horror-shock had mostly burned itself out. He had known, he supposed. Since his mother had first gone missing, he had known she wouldn’t be coming back.

Sirius was still in the kitchen. His mug of tea sat before him, stone cold. The low coloured light seeped through the small window, shining on his skin, glancing off his fall of dark hair. Remus halted in the doorway. Sirius did not turn around as he spoke.

“You came back.”

There was a soft silence.

Then Sirius did turn, and his grey eyes seemed to stare through Remus as though he were shallow water in clear light, finding his deep surfaces, the ripples in the sand. “You’ve been to the lighthouse. I used to see you up there and I wondered what it was like.”

Remus hesitated for a moment, the barest of moments. Then he said, “come on.”

Together, they walked out into the evening air.

Glancing sidelong out of the corner of his eye, Remus cast his mind back to what Sirius had said and voiced a question.

“Is it getting easier?”

The tide grew louder in their ears. A lone gull cried far beyond the horizon.

“No.”

They climbed the rest of the way in silence.

Upon the cliffs, the sky fair took their breath away. Rose and lavender and thick clear honey-gold spilled outwards from the distant edge of the shadowy sea, illuminating wisps of swiftly fleeing cloud, pouring colour over the water and gilding the tops of the waves. The last orange glow of the sun lingered at the edge of sight. Sirius’ face appeared shocked and struck with an indescribable kind of awe. They sat on the grass amongst the drifting flowers, sea thrift, precious dainty fragile things that bobbed in the day’s last breeze.

“This isn’t what I expected,” Sirius said softly, after they had spent minutes in silence.

Remus replied honestly. “Neither.” He glanced sidelong at his new companion, watching the sunset throw glowing light over his pale face.

“I don’t know how to exist here-” Sirius looked around, catching Remus in the act of staring, “- and I know this isn’t what you wanted.” His words fell out between them, weighty and depressing, holding down the air around them in their substantial truth. Remus hesitated.

The rushing dark water and empty betrayal washed through his mind. He thought of how the sea had always been trying to twist him to its will, warp his life and his thoughts, steal his family and sanity all at once. He thought of his lonely walks along the crumbling cliff path. He thought of the moon, heavy and swollen, calling him down to the shore when the time had finally been right, making sure he was there waiting to receive the ocean’s dubious gift. Her pale, cold light caressing the shape of a drowned man, surfacing in the swell.

But in this sky, there was no moon, and the waves were rolling far below- imperviously painted with a thousand different hues: shadow and colour and a slick golden glow. Remus felt his chest swell with something unnameable.

“I don’t know what I wanted,” he said, eventually, “I don’t. But stay.”

The final word was quiet with hesitation, imbued with fear over its enormity. _Stay_. Oh, Remus knew that Sirius could not go back, whether he would have it or not; he was bound by laws more ancient and immutable than those of rock or root. But it still meant something to say it. Or at least, Remus hoped so.

Stay.

By the expression on Sirius’ carven face, it appeared that it did mean something. It held a world, a strange fractious peace, a future unspooling from a thread. The sun sank below the shifting horizon. The sea continued to breathe, holding its secrets close in an inscrutable embrace. Gulls drifted across the tableau of vibrant sky.

“I will,” Sirius promised. That was all it took.

A day passed. Then a month. Then a year. Normality found its way back into their lives, sneaking in with unwashed socks and the rustle of rain on grocery bags. Sirius grew stronger, more defined, his outline simultaneously softening and sharpening with the passing of time. Nobody else seemed to notice him, although somehow he was always served in the shop or pub or library. Many times, Remus found the house left empty and unlocked by a small figure standing by the tideline, staring out to sea.

The mystery of who exactly Sirius was and how he had come to occupy so much of Remus’ life irritated him at first. Remus tried reading, tried asking, tried searching for selkie skins and tidemarks on other villagers, but the more Sirius told him of icy currents and drifting weeds the less he seemed able to grasp it.

Sirius seemed to have an insatiable hunger for this surface world. Remus showed him. They stood in front of the dresser mirror and Sirius tried on every colour, every material, that the old cottage possessed- rugs and mackintoshes and old mustard socks slid over each hand- until Remus wheezed with laughter. They fixed up the ancient car hidden under tarpaulin round the back and fed it petrol until it coughed into life. Then they drove. They drove north to drink terrible coffee and howl into the wind. They drove south to the big town and ate butteries in the square, surrounded by a cloud of jostling pigeons. They drove east and east and east, to woods of deep fir and scoured mountains capped with snow, to the sunrise, east as far as they dared. Remus forgot how to be unfeeling. Bravery found his soul once more. He and Sirius spent hours, years, really, learning how to exist again together.

Time passed, and they shared a bed. Remus would think of selkie pelts held hostage and wonder what he had done to pinion such a prize to his side- but Sirius would know what he was thinking and knock his hands away from his head. _It was the butteries_ , he would say, sharp grin cutting through Remus’ skin. _It was the libraries, the mountains, the sunsets. Stay? I would have stayed for those, not just for you._

Years spun away on the shore of the sea. The mystery ceased to gnaw at him. They simply _were_. Grey touched each of their hair. Sirius bought a boat and took out tours of people up from the big city for the day. They saw the most amazing things out there on the water: porpoises and basking sharks and the light on the ocean. That’s what Remus thought to himself, too, whenever they came back to the little home they had made: the drowned man and him. _I saw the most amazing thing that day, out there on the water_.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to the amazing mods of this fest and all the other participants who made it a great experience!
> 
> OK, now that I have been revealed, I can add a couple more notes. Thank you so much to everyone who read this story. I've been writing my dissertation so my engagement with comments has been way down, but I'm so grateful for your lovely words. I was very scared of how self-indulgent this story was and whether it would still resonate. I'm very glad it did. Here's a tip: read over the final scene on the clifftop whilst listening to "Mingulay Boat Song" sung by the Storm Weather Shanty Choir. That song helped bring this story into being.
> 
> And yes, I did republish it so more people can see it <3


End file.
